Birthday Crown

 My baby boy recently turned 18 months.  How did that happen?  Where does the time go?  It's amazing how fast it flies by.  When he turned one I wanted to make him something special that he might hopefully appreciate when he is older.  Since he is our prince, I decided he needed a crown.  A fun, grungy, yet regal crown on a cool piece of wood, for our little man.  It's been done for 6 months now and I finally took some good pictures of it, so I wanted to share it with you.

The crown was cut from a piece of cardboard, which I tore, painted, and stamped on.  The piece on the center of the crown is a doorbell plate which I found in Oregon, at an architectural salvage yard, a few years back.  I didn't touch it, the black paint was already perfectly "distressed" when I bought it!

I doodled all over the background in pencil, and wrote little messages to him.  On the bottom left it says "Never lose your sense of wonder".   When my sister was on a trip to NYC she bought Elias a gift from a store called"Sense of Wonder" and I kept a sticker off the package knowing I would use it for something one day...and now here it is!

I wrote out "prince" on one of those cheap label makers and punched holes in it before nailing it to the wood.

I antiqued a new #1 metal house number by sanding it and spattering it with paint, then I nailed it on.

My son was helping me take pictures of his crown.

After carrying it around a bit, I guess he needed a rest!

Oh, and I played around with my blog background.  I'd love to know what you think.